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The scalar tensions of nationalism manifest acutely in agriculture—particularly in the contemporary United States. This is paradoxical because farm policy calls for and enacts nativist governance that undermines the conditions of farming: from labor to water, topsoil, and pollinators, to export markets. At the heart of these scalar contradictions is the fraught, shifting terrain of agrarian populism. The intertwined origin of the U.S. Farm Bill, the American Farm Bureau Federation, and Cooperative Agricultural Extension shows how early twentieth-century fraught agrarian populism drove farm policy but how it also carried a pivotal consensus of recognition about the ecological and economic dangers of overproduction. Drawing on archival research at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) National Agricultural Library Special Collections, discourse and policy analysis of U.S. Farm Bills, and qualitative research with farmer organizations, this article traces how racialized xenophobia accentuates the hypocrisy of U.S. agriculture's extreme dependency on migrant labor, as heightened borders also reveal their ecological farce in the face of intrinsically transnational climate change, soil erosion, and water constraints. The America First trade agenda decries imports while sidelining the crisis of commodity crop glut and the spatial fix of subsidizing exports as surplus disposal. Yet, even amidst the scalar contradictions of nativist agricultural governance and the fraught farm populism driving it, there existed a kernel of agrarian populism grounded in a collective honest recognition of the ecological, economic, rural, and social crises of overproduction—and that organized against it. This kernel catalyzed the origin of both the Farm Bill and the Farm Bureau but has been subsumed in and through both since. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between racism and environmental deregulation in President Trump's first year in office. We collected data on all environmental events, such as executive actions at the federal level or Trump's tweets. Likewise, we documented racist events targeting indigenous people, people of color, Muslims, and South Asians or Arabs. We found important differences in how these agendas unfolded: Environmental events were more likely to be concrete actions, whereas racist events were more likely to involve "noisy" rhetoric. The differing forms are not associated with particular levels of harm; rather, they suggest the unanticipated and complex ways in which racism intersects with environmental governance under neoliberal, authoritarian regimes. We argue that Trump's "spectacular racism," characterized by sensational visibility, helps obscure the profound deregulation underway. The white nation plays a critical role, as Trump uses spectacular racism to nurture his base, consolidate his power, and implement his agenda. Such an analysis expands how environmental racism is typically conceptualized. Key Words: environmental deregulation, spectacular racism, Trump, white nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]